Birdoswald

Birdoswald first appears in the written record in 1211 when Walter de Beivin was farming the property, then part of the Barony of Gilsland.

He gave land in the area to Lanercost Priory and his nephew Ralph de Birdoswald indicating he had a house there.

It was a convenient location, for the thick stone walls of the old Roman fort subsequently provided protection for generations of farmers in a Scottish border area that remained marginal and dangerous territory.

In the 1580s, the farm was home to the Tweddle family who replaced the pele tower with a bastle house, a common form of border farmhouse with living quarters on the first floor above a livestock barn at ground level.

In 1858, Norman turned a rather plain farmhouse into a somewhat grander building, complete with mock medieval pele tower.